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Caine’s Inspirational Arcade

Have you seen the video about Caine’s Arcade? It’s about a nine year old boy in Los Angeles who creates an arcade for customers at his father’s used auto parts store. The documentary is ten minutes long and talks about Caine’s creation and how he started the arcade as some of the games he’s developed. The story is engaging and interesting.

Two things stood out to me. Since this is a blog to promote technology in education, let me begin with that piece. The filmmaker, Nirvan Mullick is also Caine’s first customer. He is so inspired by Caine that he decides to make a short film about the arcade as a way to get the word out that it exists. What struck me was the way Mr. Mullick went about spreading the word, navigating social media to promote his idea. Watch the film to see what tools he uses and how effective they were.

The second thing that struck me was Caine’s resilience. Starting at 3:50 in the film, Caine’s father begins to talk about the clientele at the store. He shares that most of his sales come from online and very few people walk in the store, but Caine, despite getting no sales, prepares everyday for success. He sweeps the floors, organizes the prizes, dusts the games, promotes his business, and despite limited customers he continues to be upbeat and hopeful. At one point his father suggests that they could go home early since there seemed to be so few customers, but Caine simply refuses to leave early, he refuses to cut corners.

Some would call Caine’s attempt at making an arcade a failure, but he never stops preparing for success, which is a wonderful lesson that we could all use reminding. Caine is unwilling to accept failure, he doesn’t define success by the money he is making, but by the creation of the arcade and the solving of problems (see the part where he wants to buy a claw game to pick up prizes, but on his dad’s insistence he comes up with his own version of the game). The ingenuity and determination of Caine is inspirational and should be a lesson for all those who would give up on goals and dreams too soon, before it has the chance to grow. The lesson? Prepare for success, even when it’s off in the distance, because with perseverance, it’s coming.